Thoughts on ISF Stuff

1. Read Critique of Democracy Promotion From the Security K - That make sense because that is what the conterplan does - its training people to be better US Type People


2. Doesn't SOlve Case - Explain normal arguments on why total withdrawal is good +
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KC27Ak02.html

3. Doesn't solve stability ETc. W/ ISF


Foreign Affairs, Stephen Biddle, 3/06, "Seeing Baghdad, Thinking Saigon", lexis, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations
The biggest problem with treating Iraq like Vietnam is Iraqization -- the main component of the current U.S. military strategy. In a people's war, handing the fighting off to local forces makes sense because it undermines the nationalist component of insurgent resistance, improves the quality of local intelligence, and boosts troop strength. But in a communal civil war, it throws gasoline on the fire. Iraq's Sunnis perceive the "national" army and police force as a Shiite-Kurdish militia on steroids. And they have a point: in a communal conflict, the only effective units are the ones that do not intermingle communal enemies. (Because the U.S. military does not keep data on the ethnic makeup of the Iraqi forces, the number of Sunnis in these organizations is unknown and the effectiveness of mixed units cannot be established conclusively. Considerable anecdotal evidence suggests that the troops are dominated by Shiites and Kurds and that the Sunnis' very perception that this is so, accurate or not, helps fuel the conflict. Either way, Iraqization poses serious problems, and the analysis below considers both the possibility that integration might succeed and the possibility that it might fail.) Sunni populations are unlikely to welcome protection provided by their ethnic or sectarian rivals; to them, the defense forces look like agents of a hostile occupation. And the more threatened the Sunnis feel, the more likely they are to fight back even harder. The bigger, stronger, better trained, and better equipped the Iraqi forces become, the worse the communal tensions that underlie the whole conflict will get. The creation of powerful Shiite-Kurdish security forces will also reduce the chances of reaching the only serious long-term solution to the country's communal conflict: a compromise based on a constitutional deal with ironclad power-sharing arrangements protecting all parties. A national army that effectively excluded Sunnis would make any such constitutional deal irrelevant, because the Shiite-Kurdish alliance would hold the real power regardless of what the constitution said. Increasing evidence that Iraq's military and police have already committed atrocities against Sunnis only confirms the dangers of transferring responsibility for fighting the insurgents to local forces before an acceptable ethnic compromise has been brokered.






U.S. Adviser’s Blunt Memo on Iraq: Time ‘to Go Home’
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/world/middleeast/31adviser.html


William E. Odom & Lawrence Korb, "Training Local Forces is No Way to Secure Iraq", Hudson Institute, 7/19/07, http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=5047


Killing the Patient: Iraq’s Security Forces are Part of the Problem
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/06/security_forces.html




4. Turkey/others Solve

http://www.rferl.org/content/Iraqi_Forces_Training_In_Turkey/1603834.html